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by Writingtragedy (Crankyhistorian)



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depressed Nico di Angelo, Eating Disorders, I don't know what else to tag this with, M/M, Self-Doubt, Self-Hatred, Will solace is a gem, im currently drunk and relapsing and this was the only way i could think of how to deal with this, please don't read if you're recovering from an eating disorder or depression, this is me projecting my thoughts onto Nico
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24447325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crankyhistorian/pseuds/Writingtragedy
Summary: One night Nico's eating disorder resurfaces and he doesn´t keep Will out anymore.Major trigger warning!!This story is about an eating disorder.Please don´t read if you´re currently recovering!!
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace
Comments: 5
Kudos: 165





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**Author's Note:**

> So life has been shit lately and I wrote this while drunk after I puked my guts out. Hooray  
> This is basically just me projecting on Nico so he´s OOC.  
> Sadly I don´t have a Will Solace to hold me and tell me he loves me regardless of what happens instead I have mediocre at best writing skills.   
> I´m not sure if I´ll keep this up once I wake up tomorrow

Nico stood in front of his toilet, bend over the opening with a finger shoved down his throat hoping he´ll get out enough of the food before his throat will start to hurt and get sore.   
The tears that spilled involuntarily obscured his view so that he didn´t have to look at the contents of the late-night snack he ate 20 minutes ago. It´s been a few minutes since he threw up and Nico wondered if maybe he overreacted and there wasn´t as much food as he thought there was but the reflection he saw in the window made him leave the half-empty cereal bowl on the kitchen table of the Hades cabin and sprint to his bathroom to empty his stomach of all the contents.

He has been eating well lately. Will always insisted on waking him up in the morning to accompany him to breakfast.   
Nico was more than grateful to Will for pretending like he wouldn´t have anybody else who would hang out with him in the morning if Nico didn´t show up. He knew fairly well that Will´s siblings would swarm him the second he left his side. But as long as Nico was around they would leave them undisturbed.   
They were still wary of Nico even months after the final battle with Gaea. Will kept scolding anybody who came near Nico to scare him or make him feel unwanted or unworthy but Wills best attempts to cheer him up and distract him couldn´t help Nico well past midnight after he has been left alone with his thoughts. Funnily enough in these moments, Nico didn´t even have to remember what the campers said to him his mind knew how to crush him and make fun of his worst insecurities. 

The dark eyebags that stayed no matter how long Nico seemed to sleep lately. Will offered him sleeping pills at first after some time he has slowly stopped using them and was now able to sleep, mostly, nightmare free and get a full 8-hour night of rest. 

The way Nico always seemed to slouch, he didn´t even have to see his reflection anywhere, instinctively he knew he was slouching which made him look like a huge ball from the back. Nico once saw a picture of himself taken from the back in which he was slouching and the big aviator jacket he wore made him look 100 pounds fatter. Even just thinking of that picture made Nico push the finger even further down his throat. He could feel the soreness and taste the acidity on his tongue. Nico tried to suppress the gagging noises he was making but it was hard. The more he threw up, the less he could control himself. 

Nico knew that the walls of the small bathroom in the Hades cabin were thin and if he wasn´t careful Hazel could wake up from the sound of his retching and a distraught sister standing next to him offering words of comfort and pity was the last thing he needed right now.   
He didn´t deserve it.   
The loving way Hazel would look at him. How her voice became an octave higher whenever she saw Nico and how she ran at him at full speed expecting him to pick her up and spin her around the way she always wanted to be when she was alive the first time.   
His sister wanted a loving, protective brother who cared about her interests and opinions.   
Instead, she got a broken, revolting, and unworthy fat fag who wouldn´t think twice before going after someone in cold blood.   
Nico knew that Hazel was still struggling that her brother from the '40s loved men. No, Nico didn´t love. He wasn´t capable of that feeling.   
He lusted after men and lust was sinful. He felt the disgust crawling through his skin, making him shiver and suppress a sob. He was revolting. Unworthy. 

The mirror which has once hung in his bathroom has long since been thrown away by him into some alley. Nico couldn´t stand looking at himself in the mirror. All he ever saw was imperfections. Sometimes he would stand in front of the mirror and try to find all the things Will had previously whispered he loved about him into his ear but all he ever saw was imperfections twisting the way he viewed himself.   
His nose was crooked and had a bump that stood out. His skin was ashy, grey, whenever he kept his expression neutral his cheeks would sink in and one could see the outline of his jaw penetrating through his thin skin.   
He knew Americans liked the look of a chiselled jaw but Nico didn´t fit into that description because even though his jaw stood out he still had a double chin which he would inspect by stretching out the skin below his chin and gagging at how far it would stretch.   
Another sign that he was still too fat. 

Fat, crooked, revolting, unworthy, unloveable. That´s how he would describe himself. That´s what he saw the last time he looked into the mirror and that´s what he thought as he heard himself sob and retch loudly. All thoughts of keeping quiet and not waking up his sister were thrown out of the window the guilt and disgust he felt was just too overwhelming.

Nico retreated the fingers from his mouth. He hasn´t been able to throw up the rest of the late-night cereal he had eaten. Or maybe he has and continuing to force himself would just result in an even sorer throat.   
Nico started washing his finger then moved up to wash his hand he then bend down to drink the water from the faucet trying to get most of the acidy taste out of his mouth. As he continued to wash himself he felt the cloud that seemed to occupy his mind disappear and Nico realized that he hadn´t heard anybody at the door to the bathroom.   
Maybe he was lucky and Hazel didn´t wake up?   
But that would be unusual. Hazel was a demigod just like him, she had the same instincts and her senses were heightened to perfection she could have heard a mouse sneeze from 20 miles away. Alright, that might have been a bit exaggerated and Nico wasn´t even sure if mice could sneeze but Hazel had a perfect sense of hearing she would have heard the sound of him crying in the bathroom so why hasn´t he heard anybody at the door.

Just as he finished that thought he heard a timid knock at the door.

„Nico, can you let me in?“   
He felt his blood turn to ice and bile rise in his throat once again. Behind the door wasn´t Hazel it was Will. With a shaky hand, he started to twist the key to open up the door and let Will in. He saw no reason for him to keep him out. Will knew of his struggles and even though talking about them made Nico feel uncomfortable sometimes he couldn´t deny the way he felt better after telling someone what´s been bothering him.

Nico was doing fairly well in the past few weeks. He´s been eating regularly, teaching classes at camp, even going out with Will to the strawberry fields or into the forest to a nice place the both of them once found with the help of a nymph.   
A big cut down tree trunk which had enough space so that both Nico and Will could lie down on it and enjoy the stars pass them by through the hole the cutdown tree has left. Sometimes fireflies would come out and Will would tell Nico stories of him and his mom trying to catch them when he was younger.   
All these things combined and Nico hasn´t had a single thought of forcing himself to throw up the past few weeks. Nico just couldn´t understand what was so different about tonight. Which is exactly the thing he told Will once the door opened and he was greeted with the relieved face of Will, Hazel nowhere in sight.  
„I-… I don´t know why it happened. It was going so well but suddenly- and I… I´m so sorry I wanted to do better. Why...“ He was sobbing into Will's chest.   
The feeling of failure of succumbing to his old habit breaking any inhibitions left. 

He was tired, tired from staying up, tired of throwing up, tired of not being able to control himself. 

Will stayed quiet as he slowly lowered down to the ground. If Nico wasn´t crying so hard he would have noticed how Will was still wearing his light blue striped pajamas and how there was dirt and leaves clinging to Wills bare feet. 

Will had one arm around Nico's waist and another pressing Nicos face into the crook of his neck slowly stroking his hair pressing kisses to his forehead he didn´t say a word. They stayed like this. Nico's face pressed tightly against Will's chest, grabbing the back of his grey T-shirt like it was his lifeline and Will pulling at Nico's waist as if he tried to ground Nico and face him with reality by sheer force. 

Comfort. 

It was comforting and Nico realized the more he calmed down the more he became aware of just how close Will was.  
It seemed like Will was trying to shield Nico from the world with his body alone. Like it was only the two of them, sitting on his bathroom floor which he was sure smelled of vomit but Will was a hardened veteran healer he felt the most comfortable around questionable smells. There would be no judgment and Nico knew that. 

As Nico finally stopped crying and his breathing returned to normal Wills grip loosened up a bit offering Nico to lean back if he wanted to but he chose to stay pressed against Will's chest so Will let him.

„I still love you no matter what.“ 

Nico gripped Will's shirt tighter. These were the words he needed to hear. They didn´t fix him and they wouldn´t have brought him out of his nervous breakdown but now as he sat there on the cold bathroom floor being engulfed by his boyfriend, clarity crashing into him like a freight train this declaration of love was the thing he wished to hear the most. And lucky as he was, his boyfriend knew exactly, that that was what he needed to hear. 

Hours would pass before Nico would let Will help him stand up and direct him to his bed. Will would make Nico lay down between him and the wall so that he would feel safe and surrounded by familiar things. As they would wake up hours later with the sun already high up in the sky Will would slowly make Nico talk about what happened the night before but for now, he would hold him on the cold bathroom floor praying to every god available to grant his boyfriend a dreamless sleep.


End file.
